


Mirrors Do Not Have Mercy (She Least of All)

by YouLookGoodInLeather



Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Character Study, F/M, In love but not mated, Mutual Pining, Slut of Spring Lucien, happy endings are for the weak, sad Lucien
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-18
Updated: 2017-04-18
Packaged: 2018-10-20 14:40:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10664757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YouLookGoodInLeather/pseuds/YouLookGoodInLeather





	Mirrors Do Not Have Mercy (She Least of All)

When his first love dies, Lucien seals his heart off from the world.

He does not do so in a petty, childish manner, with the kind of shallow vow that shall be broken by the first pretty face that turns his head. Lucien is more than that, always chastised for being too serious by his brothers. He has no patience for half-measures.

His love was given to a lesser fae, a fire spirit; A witch, if you believe such things. Lucien believes such things.

On the one-year anniversary of her death, he finds a doe in the forest and slits its throat, cuts out its heart. With brambles from the brush he binds the still-warm organ in thorns and twine, wrapping it thrice around its middle. It spends every night beneath his bed until a full moon blossoms; He takes it out to a clearing in the forest and pierces the rotting muscle with a dagger, whispering the words to the spell that she, his lost lover, taught him.

The words spoken, the act complete, he buries the heart beneath the ground and just like that, the aching in his chest is killed. What part of him was capable of love, he has killed stone dead.

At last, he is safe.

*

In the decades that follow, he cultivates quite the reputation. He is Tamlin’s embassy, sent to every court to win their favour. And win their favour he does, with an unfaltering dedication that seems almost brutal. He sleeps with those he needs to sleep with, seduces all poor souls who leave their hearts exposed, and takes the hell of being fucked by those who just want to prove they have power over him. Egos stroked and affections won, he rebuilds the connections that Tamlin’s father ruined, and pretends not to hear how they call him the Slut of Spring.

His talents are not saved solely for the prestige of the courts either. Wherever he travels, he is as cheap as two drinks. One on his bad days.

It is easy, convincing himself that it does not hurt. Perhaps the spell worked, perhaps it did not. It does not matter, for regardless, so many nights of aimless sex and manipulating all around does things to a person. Something has taken root within his chest, and with each fuck, fake smile, lie, it is watered, and grows a little more. Every time he ignores it, presses it down and deeper, it warps, till soon it is a barbed and ugly thing, entrenched in steel, blooming bitter, venomous flowers.

It is all fine. Those surrounding him see it only as sarcasm, wit, a sharp, black sense of humour. It is easy to pretend that nothing is wrong.

Denial is a pleasant state to rest in.

Too bad the world is filled with the cruellest creatures, mirrors who show us what we are. Lucien avoids their physical equivalent at all costs, detesting the act of looking at himself. Yet he cannot avoid those people who reflect back all he has become.

And one fine day, she comes.

*

He does not anticipate what is to come, even when he first meets her: Feyre, the human girl, the murderer of his best friend. Whilst he can certainly appreciate that she is beautiful, all visions of her are tainted by the knowledge that her hands are stained with his brethren’s blood. Besides, she seems stubborn and childish and selfish. He has no time for her, even if she is to be their saviour.

Or so he tells himself.

Yet he is the one to accompany her on rides about the gardens, on hunts into the forest. Day in and day out he escorts her round the gardens by the arm, and he finds it so unexpectedly easy to talk with her, to joke and fling sarcastic comments back and forth, knowing she will parry with equal wit. She is, in her own strange, human way, quite charming.

That odd charm slowly wears on Tamlin, though he is slow to even notice it is there. Lucien, however, is far more disturbed by what is buried underneath.

This girl. This ferocious, loving girl is all sorts of contradictions, and she should _not_ make sense.

It hits him when they are out hunting. She has her bow, he his, and after tracking a red deer for over three hours he grows bored of waiting for her to take the shot, so he looses his arrow and strikes true. Their prey is felled, falling, scattering leaves.

He goes to boast, but she is gone, dashing away from him to his kill. She drops and examines the wound, stroking the animal’s fur as it shudders through its final breaths. “You didn’t have to kill it,” she says when he approaches.

“We’re on a _hunt_.”

“You didn’t have to kill it.”

He’s watched her hunting, sees the same focused determination in her eyes as he feels, the kind that knows the thrill is in the chase. They both feel the high of knowing they can kill, of knowing they are deadly weapons, and that they can damage and destroy whatever they so chose. Yet she does not take the shot. She is him, but she is different.

“It was a hart,” she says, her soft, merciful hands still cradling the fur. “It didn’t deserve to die.”

With no visible arrow, he is struck. A centuries dead part of him trembles, and the pain of awakening, of feeling all those endless years of abusing himself crashing down upon him all at once, drives him to madness. He crouches beside her and before she can so much as speak, he kisses her upon the lips.

She does not pull back. He does not linger.

They do not speak of it again.

*

As he must, he watches her fall in love with Tamlin.

Their love affair is all in the loins, and it sickens him. Not because he has laid claim to her – far from it, he fights every warm sensation in his chest as if it were a forest fire – but because he knows this kind of love. He felt it as a child. He sealed himself from the world when he learned how all hot fire loves must end.

And some small part of him is furious. Furious at how she lets Tamlin push her around, coax her into seeing things _his_ way. At least Lucien is upfront about what he is.

It is a terrible kind of pain, to watch your best friend become a monster before your very eyes. Especially when the transformation is not on his part, but in the morphing of your own lens.

He loved this man once. He loved himself, once, in a dark, malicious kind of way. Loved his job, loved the kill, loved his constant sarcasm, his pessimism, which he took for realism. Yet this little girl comes in and shows him for what he truly is, and all at once his very existence makes his skin crawl. What has he become?

In the dark of his private quarters, he vows to be better. For her.

Though he must never touch her, lest she see what nightmares he’s been coddling inside his chest.

*

The night before her wedding, she comes to call upon him in his chambers.

His weakness for her he has walled away by now. It creeps in every now and then, when he doubts Tsmlin’s righteousness, or takes pity on some poor fae, but he is quick to quash whatever else might leak through. He even tells himself he has forgotten the kiss.

When he opens the door she does not speak. She presses up onto her tiptoes, and joins them at the lips. She lingers. She stays, long, so very long, deepening the kiss until he can feel the warmth and brilliance of her through her skin, and his hands are on her waist. She’s so thin, a ghost of the woman he fell in love with.

Perhaps what is why he can bear to touch her. “Do this one thing for me. Please,” are the only words she says, as she slips into the room and pulls free of her nightgown.

He picks her up by the waist, her legs wrapping around his hips, and carries her over to the bed. There, they make love until the young hours of the morning, the slow, gentle kind of love of those savouring what they know they may never taste again. And though every bone in him feels like it is breaking, feels like he is drowning in the sun, he is happier than he has been in a hundred years.

She leaves him in the morning, and by the afternoon, she is gone.

*

She is not there to watch him sink, though he does so spectacularly. He makes an art of it.

It seems that in the blink of an eye he is suddenly allied with the enemy, hunting an innocent woman, and taking orders from a priestess who he knows used to rape better men than him, She has bedded many men, yet no one calls her slut. That is how he knows.

In the one instance Lucien sees her, hunting her, she has changed again. The spark Tamlin had worked so hard to snuffed out is now ignited once more, billowing like a furnace fed oxygen. He is terrified, and so unbearably in love. The shell around his heart cracks, falls open.

It is all he can do to hold it together until finally, _finally_ , she comes home.

*

They both have mates now. Yet still she burns him.

“I missed this,” she says to him, as they ride through the forest together.

“The Night Court is rather lacking in greenery.”

“No.” She shakes her head, riding ahead of him without glancing back. “I’ve missed you.”

They continue in silence, parting to change into their evening finery, only reuniting once more at the dining hall doors. He stands there waiting for her, to escort her into her fiancé, but she strides right past him without so much as looking his way. He does not miss how her fingers brush against his, entwining for just a moment. Then, like a lonesome breeze, she passes him and moves on.

*

When at last she returns to her true court, bringing Lucien in tow, even he cannot deny that he is a changed man. There is an unwanted softness in his chest, and he _feels_. He feels for all the wrong he has brought about upon this world, all the schemes he has aided in and all the innocents he has harmed.

And for the first time, he meets his mate. Truly meets her. And she looks just enough like her sister to remind him of her, but just different enough for him to feel jaded and cheated that she is not _her_.

The giggling, romantic flowergirl is not to blame. She is shy and hopeful in approaching him, apprehensive from stories she has heard of him, and yet so truly faithful in the idea that all have good within that she is willing to give him a chance.

And he tries, he tries so hard to seize it with both hands for the possibility that his isolation might end. Yet her sweet smiles are those of a child, and they leave him cold, speaking of everything she has not seen nor endured. They are two creatures of different species, even now that she is fae. He is drawn to her by the mating bond, his mind floating to thoughts of her over and over and over, but they leave him numb inside. He wants her, but he does not love her.

And that is where the story should end.

*

There is a war going on, and war changes everything, even that which it does not wish to target.

Feyre does not come to him during the first fight, or the second, or the third. She is still whole-heartedly in love with Rhysand, and he with her. Neither of them are at fault, not really, the fights just come from stress and tempers and bone-deep fear. Soon they are at one another’s throats weekly, but there is no talk of divorce or separation or breaks. They do not shout at each other, but through their lover, at this war that is slowly driving all of them insane.

The touches have nothing to do with the fights, either. Feyre’s hands just happen to linger longer and longer on Lucien’s arms, shoulders, wrists, whenever she passes him, regardless of the fighting. He just happens to think more and more of her as he sinks into the bath water and screws his eyes tight shut, imagining her breath beside him.

There is nothing special about the night she kisses him. She’s just storming through the House of Wind’s corridors, fresh from a shouting match, when he happens upon her path. When he is pinned against the wall. When he is drawn into her arms. “Lucien,” she says, in that same quiet, pining voice as last time. “Please.”

They find a small alcove. She with her shadow magic shrouds them in subtle darkness so that any passing wanderer would merely pass them by, never noticing the two naked, sweating bodies shoved against one another, pressed into the walls. His hands clasping her thighs, her legs wrapped around his waist. He fucks her into the stone, his forehead bowed against her clavicle as she moans his name through tears he understands all too well.  

Even now, that foul mating bond is urging him to turn and run and gathered Elain in his arms instead, but this is Feyre, this is the woman who cracked his shelter open and flayed him with her heat. His every muscle, bone, and nerve have ached and yearned for years for her and her alone. Let this please be the end of it. Let this last fuck absolve him.

She comes twice before him, the terror is so great. Propped up against the wall, she catches her breath, her eyes slowly drying. Her fingers find his hair and stroke it the same way she did that dying hart, as if he is not long for this world. “I love you,” he says, choking the words out because they have been searing the lining of his throat for so long.

With those kind, kind eyes she smiles at him.

Shakes her head.

Kisses his forehead.

And he knows that they are done.


End file.
